our inner nature
by Medie
Summary: bsg2003 meets XMen. is it truly gone? or when they find a home again, will it all resurface...can man shake who man is?


Title: our inner nature...  
Author: Medie  
Fandom: BSG/X-Men (movieverse)  
Pairing: Jean/Scott  
Rating: PG13  
Spoilers: Not really  
Word count: 1181  
A/N: Jean Grey meets Battlestar Galactica. Way back when, I believe, meret put the idea of the X-Men in the BSG world into my head. I don't know if it's coming out the way we'd mentioned back then but...the idea never left me.  
Summary: is it truly gone? or when they find a home again, will it all resurface...can man shake who man is?

"our inner nature..."  
by M.  
------  
The clock said it was morning.

Morning was a relative term in space. No sun to chart the day, no moonlight to fill the night, just the endless expanse of stars which offered nothing of comfort and nothing of guidance – at least not to Jean. She was a scientist, after all, and the natterings of the priests of the gods, Roslin's godssent mission, and the dream of Earth passed by her with hardly a notice. She knew they meant well, she knew it comforted some of the others and so she made no comment. Instead, she got up as the clock said it was morning and headed for the shower.

Scott stayed abed, rolling into the warm spot she'd vacated, and she let him be. Though he was attempting to put together, and keep together, some semblance of an educational system for those on their ship, he didn't need to be up yet and so she'd let him sleep. He worked too hard and worried too much and needed all the rest she could give him.

The shower was hot, bracing, and over entirely too soon. She longed for the shower in their room on the colony. The Professor had seen to it they had every luxury he could afford them. It was an attempt at comfort that Jean appreciated. Most of the children who reached the school were oftentimes malnourished, dirty, and diseased. Walking into the near palatial mansion that was the Xavier family home turned school had to feel, to them, like entering the Elysian Fields and Jean knew the Professor craved that first light in their eyes. The wide-eyed awe and amazement that came with the understanding that it was their new home.

A home that many of them had never thought would become their tomb.

She shook the thought away, pushing it from her mind even as she stepped out of the shower into the cold air of the ship. The environmental system kept the temperature just a little too cold for her tastes but she didn't complain. Energy reserves were at a premium and a few degrees here or there did matter. She knew better than most how much they did.

Messages were waiting when she sat down and most she ignored. They were either notes from the President's staff, asking their never ending questions which she would answer at her leisure, or they were from the ever-so annoying Dr. Baltar, who - she suspected - was more enamored of the idea of bedding a mutant than of her ideas on his projects. They could wait. The ones that could not were from the mutants embedded throughout the fleet. Logan, Ororo, Kitty, Remy...all of the others. They dared not stay together. Even with humanity barely surviving, there was always the risk of prejudice. She'd already heard, more than once, rumors passed among the non-mutant population of the fleet that the surviving mutants were planning a coup of sorts.

It was a ridiculous notion. Not that they couldn't seize Galactica if they wished. It would have been shockingly easy for them to. It was merely pointless to do so. In the grandest demonstration of irony, the Cylons saw no difference between mutant and non. Kill and kill alike was their approach. Even if the mutants seized control it would make no difference. Not that it mattered to the rank and file. They passed on their rumors and watched those with obvious mutation closely.

Jean made an indignant face for a brief instant then poured herself her sole cup of coffee for the morning and turned her attention to the most important message of them all – the one from Xavier.

Unsurprisingly, the Commander had made yet another request for mutant aid in hunting Cylons. It was not the first time he had asked and it would not be the last time he would ask. The answer would remain the same. The mutant population among the fleet would not, and dared not, reveal themselves in such a fashion. The military using mutants as weapons in such a fashion sent a cold chill down Jean's spine. On the surface, she reasoned, it was a logical request and one that made sense. Telepaths such as herself and the Professor should be able to sense the difference between a Cylon and a human. Should. They had no frame of reference to verify it and that was where the snag hit.

If Cylons could pass for human and hide among the fleet then, doubtless, they would have prepared for the potential of encountering mutants with the ability to detect them and if so...

Just what lay waiting inside their minds? Jean had considered that particular issue with all due seriousness and what she had come up with was hardly pleasant. Best case scenario or worst case scenario, it all ended the same with the nullification of the mutant in question.

Beyond that lay what happened after. If they could, in the extreme remotest of chances, actually manage to detect the Cylons and stop them. What happened after? When they either found Earth or another planet upon which to settle. What happened then? Would the knowledge gained by the military merely be forgotten or would the issues thought dead along with the colonies resurrect themselves.

Armed with the knowledge of who was a mutant and who was not and what powers and abilities the mutants possessed...what would they do? Jean understood that too well. She understood only too well what human beings were capable of and some days, in her most traitorous of moments, she pitied the Cylons. Not out of sympathy for their cause but for the inevitable cruelties that would be visited upon them by the human race in punishment for their atrocities. She didn't permit herself that thought very often. When she had it, just for a second in the very back of her mind, she worried that maybe, perhaps, she was one of them. Having read the report Xavier had appropriated on the Cylon replacement of Lieutenant Valerii she had plenty of ammunition from which to wonder about. Thus, she said nothing and did not think about it often. It was a fear bred from the paranoia running rampant through the fleet. If you couldn't trust yourself to be who you said you were...what hope did you have?

It was a ridiculous assumption at the best of time. Jean knew that much. The Professor had refused official help from the mutant population but she didn't doubt for a second he was providing it in his own mind and that, in a peculiar way, was comfort. Were she a Cylon, he would know and she suspected, or rather she knew, she would wake to her last sight.

Peculiar comfort, indeed, and yet comfort it was.

With a sigh, she left the messages behind and got up to ready for the 'day'. There were patients to treat and children to teach and none of it would get done by sitting around and worrying. Or, for that matter, sleeping.

_'Scott...time to get up.'_

finis


End file.
